


Hard to Hold Onto

by circular_infinity



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alien Biology, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Future Fic, POV Max Evans, Pegging, Safe Sane and Consensual, Unrealistic Biology, brief mentions of past isobelxnoah, max has a lot of feelings about liz, max has a lot of feelings in general, minor michaelxmaria, not all of them happy, only semi-realistic sex, rated for sex scenes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:08:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27065425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circular_infinity/pseuds/circular_infinity
Summary: Sometimes he wonders if he convinced himself that his family needed him simply because it was him who needed them.Max Evans during season two and beyond as he tries to find his footing.
Relationships: Max Evans/Liz Ortecho
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	Hard to Hold Onto

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainbrounicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbrounicorn/gifts).



> For rainbrounicorn who requested "I think I really want to see that Liz/Max pegging scene". This does contain pegging, but isn't about pegging so I may still owe that fic.  
> The title is from the song "Open Hands" by Ingrid Michaelson.

\---

If there was one thing Max thought he knew before he died it was his role in life. He was supposed to protect people. He knew he often sucked at it, but he tried and told himself that that mattered. His family needed him. 

There's nothing like coming back from the dead and finding out he's been wrong. 

His mom always got along with Isobel better and he gets a long lecture about how it was irresponsible to take off without telling anyone and it was shameful for all of them that he missed Noah’s funeral, but then their relationship fades back into rarely talking. 

Michael is dating Maria and is off doing something with Alex Manes, Max thinks, but mostly he just seems to not be around. 

Isobel is confident in a way that’s more than just surface deep. She seems to be working through trauma she's held onto for years and Max can't help but wonder if it was him that was holding her back all this time. 

People tell him they missed him, but did they really? There’s evidence all around they kind of did, sure, but like the way you miss someone when they go away on vacation not when they've died. 

He spent years in Roswell, convinced that disaster would strike if he left, but nothing bad had happened at all when he'd died. Now no one seems to need him any more. Did they ever? 

Liz is the one exception to this. She orchestrated a medical miracle to save him. 

“I was destroyed when you left,” she whispers into his shirt one night. 

He knows the feeling. 

\---

Max finds it a little contradictory that Liz checks his heart regularly, has banned him from any exercise more athletic than warm-up stretches, gets worried when he carries in two bags of groceries at the same time and yet is still willing to have sex with him. He’s not complaining by any means, but he does find it odd. He doesn’t know much about biology and even less about cardiovascular systems, but even he knows that _‘talk to your doctor to ensure your heart is healthy enough for sexual activity’_ is a thing. She insists on being on top most of the time and doing almost all of the work even when she’s technically not (two things he’s more than fine with) and perhaps that’s why she feels it’s safe enough for them to have sex. Maybe, his ego tells him, it's that she just finds him impossible to resist. (Yeah, right.) 

He doesn’t know the reason and isn’t in a hurry to find out because he’s afraid if he mentions it Liz might put a stop to their sex life and honestly being brought back to life at risk of everyone he knows and loves and then being told he can’t sleep with Liz anymore would probably just be too much. 

So he stops working out and still gets to have sex with Liz. Not exactly win-win in his opinion, but he’ll take what he can get. Having the afterglow dissipated by medical tools being shoved at him right after sex though? That he could do without. 

\---

Max wishes he could talk to Rosa about what it was like being dead. She clearly has no interest in being friends, never mind the kind that has existential conversations about death so he never even begins to broach the topic. 

He tries to apologize once for how they'd framed her for Noah's crimes, but she shuts him down. 

“You fucked up my life, but you also saved it,” she says. “For Liz’s sake let’s just call it even.” 

She never thanks him for bringing her back from the dead, but it doesn’t bother him because he doesn’t feel that he’s owed a thank you. Sometimes he wonders if it’s because she hates him for what he did ten years or a few months ago. 

He thanks everyone for saving his life, but there’s a part of him that remembers his anger and despair when it became clear that Isobel was going to ignore his wishes. Did they effectively violate a DNR or did they save him from suicide? He’s not sure. He’s just thankful he didn’t hurt anyone. 

\---

Liz grows distant and he’s not sure why. Perhaps it just feels that way because of the guilt he feels about keeping his secrets. Maybe it’s just because they’re both busy. She works days and he works nights. Sex is the only time he doesn’t feel like their relationship isn’t being pulled apart at the seams and while he has no real experience with serious dating, he can’t imagine that’s a good sign. Sometimes they keep it vanilla and sometimes they try spicing it up a bit. 

She asks him one night what his hard turn offs are and before he can even consider the question he’s answering, “Bondage.” 

It feels like maybe by having something he won’t do means that he’s broken some rule about sex – that even the things you don’t like should be all right if it’s being done to you by someone you love. Like the fact that he believes that she would never hold him down and hurt him against his will means he shouldn’t be afraid to let her do it, but she’s just accepts it and tells him her turn offs. She doesn’t even ask him to explain. He’s not sure what he would have said if she had. 

\---

He gets the idea while they’re in bed together and she’s in a reverse cowgirl straddle across his hips, pushing herself down onto him. His hands are cradling the sides of her ass, resting there, as she moves herself with a deliberate rhythm. He misses holding her hips in place and thrusting into her as she claws at him or the bed sheets and he wonders if that’s something she’d like to do to him. 

He pictures it vividly, Liz pressing him open, putting something of hers inside his body and he nearly comes right then. 

After they’re done, he disposes of the condom while she gets the equipment to check his heart which he’s grown to feel is the least sexy post-sex ritual of all time. She gives him the all clear and they settle into bed to cuddle for a little while. 

He thinks again about asking Liz to peg him and considers all the ways he could segue into the topic but when he opens his mouth what comes out is, “What do you think about anal?” 

Liz sits up to look at him so quickly he wonders if she feels a little whiplash. 

“Um,” she says. “I mean, I tried it once in college, but I didn’t like it much. Maybe we didn’t use enough lube or the guy didn’t know how to find my g-spot from that side, but –“ 

“I meant you do me,” he cuts her off. “I meant pegging.” 

“Oh!” Liz’s brows shoot up with new appraisal and, if he doesn’t misread her, interest. “Oh, that’s different.” 

\---

They start small – literally – with fingers and butt plugs and dildos so skinny they’re barely there. Liz does a bunch of reading and texts him about a thousand articles that he skims. Liz is tackling this like a project, but Max has never really wanted to know the technical ins and outs of sex (no pun intended). He got enough education to be safe and to know how to find all the important bits, but other than that, he’d much rather just work with his partner to find what’s right in the moment. It’s always gone well in the past. 

The adventures toward pegging are hit or miss at the beginning. The first time she works her fingers into him to find his prostate she goes too fast and he comes more quickly than he did even when he was a teenager and shorts out all the lights in the house. Between that and Rosa’s wail from the living room of “This had better not be because of a sex thing!” the mood is killed for the rest of the evening. 

“That’s not how the articles described it,” Liz says after she’s checked his heart and they’ve fixed the lights and settled into bed for the night. “You seems to be much more sensitive than a human man.” 

“I wouldn’t know.” 

“Maybe I should ask Isobel?” 

“Please don’t ask my sister for sex advice,” Max asks, begs really if you want to be technical about it. 

“It doesn’t need to be advice about you.” 

“She’ll know it’s about me and I’ll know that she knows and then I’ll spend our time in bed wondering if whatever you’re doing was her idea. Honestly, just this five sentence conversation is more Isobel than I want included in my sex life.” 

Not to mention that the last thing Isobel ever needs is someone asking about anything to do with Noah. It’s something that Max would have thought that Liz would have considered in the past, but she’s seemed to have emotional blinders on recently. Not that he can judge, and doesn’t. It's nothing he hasn't been guilty of himself. She has her sister and her dad and the diner and his heart to worry about. It’s no wonder her attention span doesn’t have as much space for other things these days. 

\---

Learning he’s not actually biologically related to Isobel shakes his foundation. He knows they’re still family, just as Michael has also always been his family, but he feels unmoored. Trying to express these feelings to Liz just make it worse because it makes it all the more obvious how far they are from reaching each other. 

They’re both too worn to fuck that night, but they do the next and it’s with practiced ease that she slides a condom onto him and follows it quickly with her cunt, warm and pulsing around him. They’re as connected as two people – two humans at least – can be and yet there’s still a gulf between them. Part of him wants to suggest he mark her with another handprint, but he always stops himself from suggesting it. If she wanted it she’d ask and she hasn’t. The first time she’d pressed his hand to her chest and begged for that connection it had been like a revelation. Now he fears that all it would illuminate the distance between them, without offering any solution to fix it. 

\---

It feels like it takes them forever to work up to using Liz’s harness, but eventually he’s been worked open and lubed up and is on all fours on his bed waiting for her to put her dildo inside him. Even the idea of it makes his toes curl with anticipation and the feeling of the blunt head of it pressed against him, into him, he lets out a groan and forces himself to think of unsexy things so this isn't over too soon. 

It’s intense, almost to the point of being too much, but it feels good to do this with her, that she wants to do this with him. She finds a rhythm that barely brushes his prostate, but he still feels like he’s being lit up from the inside and shakes and groans and when he comes it’s without her even touching his cock once. 

He eats her out afterwards, twice, until he’s hard again and then she rolls him over onto his back and sticks her fingers in his ass and swallows him down to the root and he’s not even sure which action makes him come, but when he does it makes his vision go white. 

He lies there trying to catch his breath and instead of leaving to get her stethoscope, Liz crawls up the bed and kisses along his body as she does until she catches his mouth with hers and they just lie there making out for long enough that his arm falls asleep where she’s lying on it. He feels close to her in a way that he hasn’t in a while and thinks that maybe, if he can make this feeling last for both of them, they’ll be okay. 

\---

They're not. 

\---

Apparently, feeling disconnected was the least of their problems because as it turns out, while he was keeping secrets from her, she was keeping them from him. He feels shocked and betrayed and part of him thinks _‘you were lying to her too’_ but the larger part, the part that’s gotten the most use over the years, cries _‘this puts my family in danger’_ and it’s like that’s all he can hear. She leaves and he doesn’t stop her. 

Sometimes he thinks she should have just left him dead. 

\---

Life is a bit of a nightmare after Liz leaves town and not just because it turns out Max came out of a test tube and it only the most recent in a long line of test-tube-Maxes. Michael and Isobel are pretty firmly on team _'let's kill him, he killed our moms'_ , but Max thinks the clone, Jones, probably has information they'll need. Turns out his objections don't matter for much because Jones overpowers him the first night, shoves him into a pod and takes his place. The next time Max wakes up it's been half a year and Michael and Isobel killed Jones anyway. 

The thing is, it's been six months because no one had realized Max had been replaced. 

Max's first thought is, _'Are you fucking kidding me?'_ Isobel and Michael have known him for years, he even has a psychic connection with her, and they both knew that there's was a duplicate of him running around yet neither of them noticed? 

His second thought is. _'I was gone for another six months and it didn't matter?'_ Twice now he's been ripped away from his life and his family and now this is the second time he's come back to find them stronger and happier than when he left. 

The third thought is, _'Good.'_

\---

It shouldn't be a world shattering revelation that other people's lives don't hinge on his. It had been before but somehow, this time, it's not. They probably should have all gotten out of each other's ways years ago. Maybe now they finally can. 

\---

It takes Isobel three days to admit that they had Kyle perform a second heart surgery on Max while he was still unconscious and that he now has a new, undamaged heart that his body shouldn't reject. They'd pumped him full of the healing serum and kept him a coma for an extra month while he'd healed. 

"What the fuck?" Is all he can say. 

"I didn't want to take the chance that you'd say no." 

"I don't want to die," he says and realizes he means it. "I would have agreed. You should have woken me up and asked me." 

"I'm sorry," she says and moves to rest her head on his shoulder. "I was scared. I need you." 

"No, you don't," he says. 

It's the first time he's verbalized the thought. 

Before, the idea of it was crippling. He hated that he'd devoted so much time to something that no one had actually needed, that all his choices had turned out to be pointless. Now it feels freeing. 

Isobel makes a noise of protest. 

"You don't," he repeats. "That's a good thing." 

"Probably," she agrees. 

"It is." 

\---

It turns out what it was actually Liz that figured out Jones was an imposter. She'd just happened to be in town visiting her dad and had run into Jones who had successfully hit on her. Fortunately she'd figured it out before they'd actually gotten to the _'have sex with Max's clone_ ' thing. 

"It would have been nice if someone had warned me," Liz gripes as he tries to cook her a _'thank you for saving me and also for not fucking my clone'_ dinner. 

"Don't look at me," Max says. "I was in stasis almost the whole time. What made you figure it out?" 

He's not sure what kind of answer he's hoping for. Maybe something terribly romantic like how she looked in his eyes and just knew it wasn't the man she'd loved looking back? Probably not though. But maybe? 

Instead Liz ducks her head in chagrin. 

"What?" Max asks, starting to dread the answer. 

After a long moment Liz admits, "I asked to peg him and he said no." 

Max stares at her for a moment, mind blank and then he begins to laugh so hard he can't breathe and then falls to the floor and stays there so long he burns dinner. 

He has to order take out and after they eat he asks her to peg him. She says yes. 

\---

They make out for what feels like hours, but somehow it also seems like just moments before they're both naked on his bed. He's on his back and she's kneeling between his legs. She takes off her rings, one by one, her gaze locked with his, and he feels his heart speed up with anticipation. 

"Maybe you should turn over," she suggests. 

"I want to see you," he says, so they prop up his hips until he's lying at an angle that'll be good for both of them. 

She works him open steadily, her fingers warm and slick with lube sliding in and out of him with increasing ease. Once he's ready she straps on the harness with one of the larger dildos and pushes in slowly with one long press forward until she's all the way inside and their hips are flush against each other. Max loves being in her, but there's something about having her in him that makes him feel overwhelmed in all the best ways. 

She fucks him hard and deep, making sure to brush past his prostate with every thrust and he tries to last, but doing this with her, knowing that she's inside him, making him feel this way is too much. When he comes he feels incandescent. 

\---

After they've cleaned up Max expects Liz to dress and leave, but she settles back into bed with him to cuddle. 

“I’m sorry about the research,” she says, out of the blue. “I got so wrapped up in the possibility of it that I forgot about the ethics of it.” 

“I’m sorry I destroyed your work without talking to you about it first,” Max offers. 

Liz shrugs. 

"I never would have been able to show it to people anyway," she says. "I'm making real progress in my new job. It's nothing like studying alien life, but it's interesting and I'm glad I'm doing it." 

"That sounds nice." 

"It is," she says and snuggles in closer. "Do you know what you're going to do next?" 

"I don't know," he says, but as soon as he does he realizes it's not true. 

Liz gives a 'hmm' of understanding. 

"Actually, I’m tired of all this alien bullshit,” Max says. “I want to go with you to California with you and see what happens.” 

Liz sits up, surprised. 

“You really think you can finally leave Roswell?” 

“No one here needs me.” 

“I don’t need you there, either,” Liz says, but she says it as a gentle reminder that if that’s what he wants out of a relationship between them then it’s not going to work. 

"Yeah, I know. I've always known. It used to bother me because I thought that if I wasn't of use then what good was I?" 

"And now?" 

"Now I think I shouldn't define my worth by other people. I don't know, maybe it's stupid." 

"I don't think so." She considers him for a moment and continues, "Why don't you come visit for a month or two and we'll see how it goes." 

"I like that idea." 

"Bring your dildos." 

"Liz, come on," Max says. "They were always really yours." 

\---

Max would have thought that leaving behind nearly everything he'd ever known would have been difficult, but it turns out to be easy. There's nothing like waking up miles away and knowing that there's nowhere else he's needs to be, that he can live just for himself and that's it's not only all right, it's good. He takes a breath and feels free. 

\---


End file.
